70mm Ultra Panavision and The Hateful Eight

Cinema has been a vital piece of American culture. Movies are a way to escape and live an experience of a different individual for 120 minutes. This past December (2015), Quentin Tarantino released 'The Hateful Eight' to audiences around the world. With films such as 'Reservoir Dogs', 'Django Unchained', and 'Pulp Fiction', Tarantino has captured the respect and imaginations of eager movie-goers. Quentin Tarantino does it again filming 'The Hateful Eight' in 70mm Ultra Panavision.

The Hateful Eight in 70mm Ultra Panavision

70mm Ultra Panavision was born out of the era when film studios were experimenting with different formats. Cinerama and Cinescope were commercial failures because of their costs and inconsistent film quality. What launched the practical use of 65 & 70mm film was the 'Ten Commandments'. 'The Ten Commandments' was filmed on 65mm film VistaVision widescreen. VistaVision was successful, but due to anamorphic lens distortions, was overtaken by Panavision; which reworked how light entered into an anamorphic lens.

Super Panavision vs Ultra Panavision

Both formats expand on the common film widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85-1.89:1. Super Panavision uses a spherical lens. Spherical lenses are common among 35mm films, and are much cheaper than anamorphic lenses. There are anamorphic attachments that can be used with spherical lenses. These attachments can cause issues with focal distances and require too much scene light. Anamorphic lenses distort the picture horizontally by utilizing the full frame on a 35mm or 70mm film. To counteract this distortion, the projector has an anamorphic lens that distorts the image back to the correct proportion. The anamorphic lens allow for a wider aspect ratio of 2.76:1 for the Ultra Panvision; while the Super Panavision's use of a spherical lens has an aspect ratio of 2.20;1; which is narrower than widescreen formats of 2.35:1 and 2.39:1.

Anamorphic lenses create a wide view and lens flares

It should be brought to attention that both Super and Ultra Panavision  formats use a MGM 65mm camera, and is later transferred over to a 70mm film. The extra 5mm on the film was saved for audio. Although nowadays, the audio would most likely be manipulated by digital means.

Considerable Mentions

Ultra Panavision format offers more than just a wider picture for the audience. Because of the increased frame of the film, there is more data and information available for the camera to capture. This equates to richer color depths and less visual noise compared to a 35mm film, but the same can be said for anamorphic lenses. The anamorphic lens allows for a higher quality depth of field, and ability to capture depth. 

70mm film can be downsized to 35mm and still retain an aspect ratio of 2.55:1. Because the Ultra Panavision uses the anamorphic lens, the aspect ratio is greater than that of the Super Panavision because of its use spherical lens.

This method of filming can only be done on analog. Digital has not been able to keep up with being shot at a 2.76:1 ratio. This is a reason as to why many movies shot today are done digitally. The 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio is becoming the norm. With the explosion of indie films released on the internet and the downfall of the American theater industry, there is not much diversity among filmmakers who venture beyond different formats. 

Last Words

Tarantino knew when he made his latest film that he was holding onto a dying way of creating magic. His admiration to pay homage to a bygone era makes Take a moment to watch this brief video expanding on 70mm and the film-making process.

Fine Arts and Computer Graphics

A Strong Foundation

Establishing a strong foundation is empirical for any structure to succeed. Art and design is no different. The concepts, history, and experience in the fine arts enables the possibility to excel. Fine art is the strong foundation that should be part of any computer graphics artist's utility belt. Without it, the ability to construct, design, and animate is made harder because of the lack of understanding between the elements and principles of design.

Old Assignment Back in High School

Elements and Principles of Design

The elements and principles of design are used adjacent with each other to bring about a high-quality piece of art that captures the attention of the viewer. Without going into too much detail, the elements of design are line, color, attributes, shape, categories, texture, space, and form. The principles of design are unity/harmony, methods, balance, types, hierarchy, repetition, scale/proportion, dominance/emphasis, and similarity/contrast. Depending on where the information is derived, the elements and principles of design can differ. 

The elements are physically applied to the composition; with the principles of design applied to the elements, the two work together to create a balanced and unified composition. Not every design needs to contain all of the elements and principles to become a successful piece of artwork, but knowing how to use the elements and principles together is vital.

Fine Art Hands On Experience

Not all, but some artists who strictly use computer graphics, assume fine art experience is not necessary for a successful career in the computer graphics industry. That is far from the truth. Having a history with fine arts creates a better understanding of how the elements and principles of design work with each other. Having first hand experience altering lines and creating depth by hand trains the mind to better analyze space and perspective. As wonderful as computers have become, most computer graphics programs analyze and produce depth and perspective for the user. Understanding color has to be the biggest factor in fine arts experience. Physically mixing color via watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and ink allows for greater understanding of color theory.

Portrait Of A Friend Back In School

Begin by sketching everyday objects. By doing so in different lighting environments, helps the artist understand how shadows interact with real-world objects. Exploring different mediums opens up the mind to different textures, shapes, and alternate ways to achieve harmony.

Recommended Equipment

For those inexperienced with the tools needed to create fine art pieces, this is a recommended list of what is best suited. Two necessary items are a drawing set and a notepad of drawing paper. The drawing set usually come with a series of different sketching pencils and charcoal pencils/sticks. Personally, a small set of high quality colored pencils should be acquired. These pencils can set guidelines for how a design's color will appear. Painting is not for everyone but for those interested, having a few trays of watercolor paint is helpful. Understanding mixing colors is accessible with paint, and color palettes can be saved on a physical medium.

AP Art Concentration Piece Back in School

Combination of Traditional and Computer Graphics

What Now???

With the proper fine art utensils and understanding of art and design, designers and artists with the proper skills can combine the techniques of multiple backgrounds to arrange a composition that fuses the two realms together. Ever since the explosion of popularity regarding computer graphics, artists have created works with traditional and new age elements. This relatively new avenue has contributed to unique motion pictures, advertisements, animations, and graphic designs. Explore different techniques and workflows to find new and exciting ways to leave an impact in the art and the design world. Experimentation is a pathway to achieve success.

A strong foundation is the building block to innovation. Traditional art and design is the foundation and new age computer graphics is the window to innovation.

Render Passes and Compositing

Compositors of all levels know how tedious and technical editing and manipulating a scene can become. Each shot is broken down and edited to an acute detail to where the audience can not determine what is computer generated, and what is not. The compositor may need to adjust the hue of an object, edit the brightness of a reflection, or add a blur toward z-space. Instead of having to re-render the 3D scene relentlessly to achieve the desired result, render passeses help ease those blemishes without the hassle of spending time and resources on re-renders. Render passes is the process of individually rendering out the elements of a full beauty pass; such as the ambient occlusion, specular, reflections, refractions, and so on.

Autodesk Maya 2016 and Mental Ray will be the examples provided for render pass examples. There are numerous amounts of 3D programs and render plug-ins available. Use whatever you are comfortable with using.

The procedure involves opening up the render settings and clicking on the "Passes" tab. If the passes tab does not appear, venture into preferences and open up the "rendering" tab and check "Show Maya Legacy Tab". There is a render pass tab under "Scene" and hidden under "Cameras", but that's for the new MILA materials. If you use MILA materials then go on ahead and use those settings.

Typically, what is needed from the render pass is diffuse, reflection, specular, ambient occlusion, matte, and a depth pass. Depending on the scene, these passes will change. For example, scatter passes for subsurface light scattering and a fur pass. If the scene being worked on has more than one object it is recommened to put each object on a separate layer. By doing so, each object can have a render pass.

Autodesk has great resources for better understanding render passes and rendering with Mental Ray. There's more detail about what each pass is, and how they all interact with each other.

Multi-Render Passes

Mental Ray Tabs in Maya 2016

Set Up Mental Ray Scene Pass

About The Render Settings Mental Ray Tabs in Maya 2016

Render Pass Attribute Editor

Introduction to Multi-Render Pass: A Simple Workflow Example

Compositing Workflow Within Blackmagic Fusion

Now that the passes have rendered, it is time to composite the pieces together. Compositing software such as The Foundry's Nuke, Blackmagic's Fusion, and even Adobe After Effects are used to assemble the passes. Following the previous render pass example, there is a diffuse, reflection, specular, ambient occlusion, matte, and depth pass. The set-up is roughly the same for all three programs. After Effects is layer-based and the transfer mode can be easily changed via a dropdown tab by the layer in the timeline. Nuke and Fusion are node-based and require a "merge" node to change the transfer (apply in Fusion) mode. The diffuse pass is the base to our final product, the diffuse apply mode stays as is. Reflections are next and are set to "screen"; followed by specular set to "screen"; then ambient occlusion set to "multiply". If darker shadows are preferred, duplicate another AO layer (After Effects), or create another node and set it to "multiply".

Render Passes Can Become A Handful

The matte and depth passes are used to enhance the detail and blend the 3D assets with the scene. The matte pass is used to blend/feather the composited piece with the background. Without the matte pass, the scene would look flat and pieced together. The depth pass builds upon what the matte pass provides by creating depth to the 3D asset. Maya or any 3D software can apply depth of field to the renderable camera, but it is time consuming and resource heavy. By rendering out a depth pass, time is saved and the quality is rarely affected. Each software is different, but the general idea is to set the depth path to an alpha and then applying a camera/depth blur. Once completed, color adjustments and other edits should be made to build upon the composition.

Render passes are a strong and necessary tool in a compositor's toolbox. Experiment with different passes and shader materials. Look into different rendering software. There may be more efficient ways to render pass a scene. Autodesk offers Composite  and MatchMover a free compositing and match moving bundle. This set of free software is an opportunity to learn more about the computer graphics and how to apply those skills in a practical manner.